Reception
Aqua's character has received mixed response from video game publications with initial comments focused on her, Terra's and Ventus's brief appearances in Kingdom Hearts II. Writing for GamesRadar, Chris Antista commented that he did not understand the importance of him and the other characters being briefly featured in Kingdom Hearts II, although it could be explained once the player finishes Birth by Sleep. Videogamer.com writer Emily Gera stated that players may know little about them due to their role in Kingdom Hearts II, but with Birth by Sleep, players will able to know about them. Prior to her initial revelation in trailers from Birth by Sleep, 1UP.com's Jeremy Parish stated that fans speculated that Aqua would be a male character. Having played a demo from Birth by Sleep as Aqua in the E3 2010, Ryan Clements from IGN enjoyed her character due to her gameplay mechanics.
While reviewing Birth by Sleep, Adam Ghigiino from PALGN criticizing her "idealistic" dialogues, finding them repetitive. PlayStation LifeStyle's Thomas Williams found the trio as welcome additions to the franchise, finding their stories enjoyable even though the three travel to the same worlds. Kevin VanOrd from GameSpot gave praise to Aqua's character, based on her personality, how it counterparts Ventus's as well as Holland's voice acting. 1UP.com's Steve Watts found Aqua's gameplay as the weakest from all the three characters as in contrast to Ventus and Terra, she specializes in magic techniques which are weak during the game's start. On the other hand, Bob Miur from Destructoid found it appealing due to how it contrast previous fighting styles seen in the Kingdom Hearts series. Aqua's story was also found less entertaining than Ventus's, but also less predictable than Terra's. Following Square's advice of using Aqua as the last playable GameInformer writer Bryan Vore liked how her actions were played with Ventus's and Terra's. However, Bore still cited Aqua's playthrough as repetitive if played as the last one, and also said its plot was weakest from all of them. Alongside Ventus and Terra, X-Play found Aqua similar to the protagonists from Kingdom Hearts with her being compared with Kairi. In contrast to Van Ord, RPGFan's Ashton Liu found Aqua's voice "bored for almost the whole game", citing how it is notable when comparing her with other voice actors such as Mark Hamill and Leonard Nimoy. In an ASCII Media Works poll, Aqua was voted as the twelveth most popular video game character from 2010. In a Famitsu poll from 2011, Aqua was voted as the fourth most popular Kingdom Hearts character.
Read more about this topic: Aqua (Kingdom Hearts)
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